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See More Stunning Concept Art for Pixar's Cancelled Project 'Newt'

While we wait for Pixar to finish up a prequel to Monsters Inc and ready their next original project for 2014, titled The Good Dinosaur, we also still continue to mourn the loss of one of their "cancelled" projects - Newt. The film was originally scheduled for the summer of 2011 then was cancelled (in place of Cars 2) due to similarities to Rio. Essentially, it's about a blue-footed newt, a tiny little salamander, who finds the one remaining mate of his species. We first posted some beautiful concept art back in 2010, but an illustrator named Katy Wu has recently posted her set of concept art for the project and it's stunning. Gorgeous work.

The blog post by Katy Wu (found via The Pixar Times) states simply: "I started working at Pixar in 2009 on a feature film directed by Gary Rystrom and production designed by Bill Cone. The film was cancelled in the end but it was still a good experience." Here's some of her artwork for the film, which I am still awed by:

Originally, Pixar put this in development aiming for a summer of 2011 release, hence Wu's early 2009 work date for artwork. The story was supposed to follow the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet who are forced together by science to save the species, but they can't stand each other. For a while all we saw was that logo artwork with the guy peaking out around the "t", but now we get a much better look at the world, even a bit of the story and characters, and what they would go through. Sad we won't get to see this. My favorite pieces are: the smaller one where they're under spotted red leaves, and the waterfall shot.

For more from Katy Wu, visit her blog on blogspot. As we all know, there are certainly more than one artists working on any Pixar project at any given time, and she also points out more artwork by other talented Pixar artists on a Facebook page. If you're interested in seeing more, check that out as they've got more character sketches and test art from the cancelled project. Maybe one day they'll put this back in development? Even with similarities to Rio, I still would honestly love to see this, it seems touching and beautiful in a Pixar way.